This paper describes differences between the capacity of Swedish and Danish students to attain life quality. This was carried out by examining the level of competence in four different groups of Swedish and Danish students, and is based on the hypothesis that the possession of competence is a premise for the development of life quality. Competence means the ability to make sense in complex situations; more concretely it is the quality on the basis of which the individual activates his or her knowledge base and co-ordinates his or her actions. This definition implies that competence is a synthesis of perception and action, both of which can be detected and studied. The test method used in the present experiment involve the individual's perception of information, adaptation and preference between three different model societies, projected via series of slides. An account will be given of the individual's ability to pay attention to the phenomenon of self-recognition within these societies. The paper demonstrates that purposeful adaptation and preference in judgement give certain clues to the mental states of the participating students. The result of the examination was remarkable. For the first time in twenty years of using the same test method, the scores of a participating group vary considerably from the norms. Values which normally turn out positive were instead negative. The experiment reveals that a sample of Danish students was incapable of distinguishing between different used models in the test material. At the present time according to our test method they are incompetent.

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